With a Song and a Prayer
by Travithian Axile
Summary: Jimmy chases down one ghost after another, searching for Claire, Castiel, or both. Eventually, he reaches the end of the world. Clairestiel, 4.20/5.04 AU. Warnings for alcohol and drug use, bad language, and a mention of semi-incest.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **With A Song and A Prayer (1/2)  
**Characters/Pairings:** Jimmy/Amelia, Claire, Castiel  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** Jimmy chases down one ghost after another, searching for Claire, Castiel, or both. Eventually, he reaches the end of the world. 4.20/5.04 AU.  
**Word Count: **3,042  
**Warnings: **Some gore.  
**Notes: **After reading some frankly awesome stories about how Claire meets 2014!Castiel, this idea turned up like a bad penny and I just had to write it. Apologies for the many inaccuracies no doubt incurred regarding how the US Army handles zombie outbreaks. Enjoy!

* * *

_Just like a prayer, your voice can take me there__  
__Just like a muse to me, you are a mystery__  
__Just like a dream, you are not what you seem__  
__Just like a prayer, no choice your voice can take me there_

- Madonna, "Like A Prayer"

* * *

If Jimmy has to describe his life with a metaphor, he would say it's a bummed record. The needle skips back from the crack in the vinyl and the same snatch of song plays again and again way past the point of tedium. There's probably a lesson to be learned right there.

Jimmy still gets a lot of sympathy these days, though he is usually forewarned by the slightly constipated look adopted by his well-wishers as they approach and can come up with a plausible excuse in time to effect a polite escape. They mean well, but what they don't know is that as the months had dragged by and become a year after Claire's disappearance and the media buzz began to die down is that he and Amelia had searched for and found some tenuous semblance of _normal _if only just by their fingertips_. _They still had each other and the steadying bulwark of their faith. God would provide – if not their daughter, then some measure of peace, acceptance, balm for their wounds.

Then one day the bell had rung and Jimmy almost ripped the door off its hinges in his haste to touch the miracle standing on the step, give it warmth and flesh and bone. Claire hadn't vanished into smoke or went away like last time. Instead she had thrown her arms around him, sobbed "Daddy, Daddy" into his ear while Amelia seized Claire from behind and the three of them had rocked back and fro in a scene that wouldn't have graced even the cheesiest of Hollywood flicks.

Claire's hand was just as real and warm over his hours later in the split second before the light sank into her mouth and eyes and settled into her bones, holding on tightly as though she would never let go.

But the angel in her skin did a moment later, and walked away without a word.

Jimmy doubts anyone could possibly blame him for being a little obsessed.

* * *

Jimmy searches for Claire in the cracks, the dissonance between the waking world and the stuff of nightmares that he had lived through however briefly. Reports of mysterious deaths go into a folder that gets filled up quickly, and during lunch break his browser is crammed with multiple tabs on a varying but similar theme. Demons, omens, spirits – anything he figures an angel in the thick of the Apocalypse might be interested in. Anyone is an expert on the Internet but Jimmy didn't spend five minutes in an angel's head without picking up at least a knack for sniffing out the bullshit from the authentic stuff.

Amelia wants to move on, get back on the rails they circled so easily back in a past that seems curiously remote, lost on the other side of an unbridgeable chasm. She gets that tight, pinched look around her brows every time she catches sight of one of his files so Jimmy always makes sure to keep his research locked out of her sight. He keeps secret, too, the few pictures of Claire that he finds – always blurred, cut off partway, or looking to the side, elusive as in real life. Her face is hidden but not the distinctive orange and black stripes of the hideous Halloween-themed jacket a friend had once given as a gag gift. It certainly makes things easier and sometimes Jimmy wonders how much Claire knew, how much Castiel let her know. Was it the first coat she had grabbed, on the way out the door? Or was it for another reason entirely?

Jimmy looks for signs and symbols in everything, now.

"Why can't you just let it go?" Amelia explodes one day when she catches him on the phone to an old buddy of his in Miami, enquiring after a cruise ship found off the coast filled with carved-up bodies. She had stayed silent about the salt on the windowsills and the Devil's Trap under the welcome mat because it was understood without saying that safety is infinitely preferably to a normalcy that is at best only an illusion. That doesn't mean she likes it though, and the confrontation has been a long time in coming. The words hang between them, out at last, and Jimmy feels almost relieved.

"How can you say that when our daughter's out there fighting to save the world?" he counters. "I just want to know whether she's okay—"

"That's not Claire." Amelia's tone could have frozen boiling water. She never says Castiel's name if she can help it.

"She's still in there, sleeping," Jimmy insists. "Like I was."

Amelia's gaze is steady and sad. "An endless sleep that you don't wake up from," she says. "You know what people usually call that, don't you?"

Jimmy looks away.

"Claire sacrificed herself so you could live." Amelia moves close, touching his neck with the tips of her fingers. "All those cases you're reading about…we can't do anything about those, they're out of our hands. Or are you going to grab a gun and go hunting like the Winchesters?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "No, definitely not. I…" He trails off.

"Then what are you _really_ looking for?" Amelia pushes but there isn't an answer to that, or at least an answer that Jimmy can readily give.

* * *

As it turns out, it doesn't matter. None of it mattered in the grand plan, the Novaks' private pain an insufficient sacrifice to stave off the Apocalypse and all but ignored as the world folds in on itself and civilization crumbles around its death throes.

An explosion booms in the distance and Jimmy thinks darkly that T. S. Eliot can go ahead and suck it as he and Amelia huddle together with a hundred other shivering bodies in the dark, cramped space of the bomb shelter. A soldier stands at the entrance armed with a machinegun that he keeps trained on those inside as much as the rampaging monsters outside. Just the touch of blood to blood is enough to turn you into one of them and Jimmy can't bank on whatever special quality his blood has that gives Castiel a free ticket to ride him around to grant him immunity. He keeps glancing around nervously at his neighbors, suspicion crackling in between them like a coming storm.

"Why is this happening?" Amelia whispers. Her voice shakes with fear and just the slightest hint of anger. "Where are the angels, what are they _doing?"_

The cramped confines make even a whisper hard to conceal, and it is overheard by the man sitting next to Amelia, his knees hugged to his chest; Jimmy can't make out any more details than that. "Watchin' over us, sister, just as the good Lord set." He shrugs. "Look on the bright side—leastways we're still alive, aren't we?"

As if on cue, a spray of gunfire goes right off right outside the big steel doors. Fists and bullets bounce off the metal and for an indeterminate period of time that might as well be an eternity they listen to the sound and fury of a protracted battle taking place right at their doorstep and the hammering of their hearts underneath the layer of noise. There's only one exit and if those monsters break in there won't be any humans walking back out.

When silence finally falls thick and heavy as a shroud someone breathes out, "Thank _God", _quick and startled, and is swiftly hushed.

There is a knock—_tat-a-tat-tat _and their guard unlocks the door. Someone on the other side says, "All clear", sounding weak and tired. When they are herded out they see why, the horribly recognizable bits and pieces strewn everywhere like the stuffing of carelessly manhandled dolls where the bullets had ripped the monsters apart and turned them human again in death.

Beside Jimmy, the angel expert bends over and throws up on his shoes. The air is heavy with the smell of smoke and burned flesh and death and absolutely devoid of angels. Jimmy clamps his mouth shut to keep the stuff from getting on his tongue and walks on without looking back.

* * *

They are shunted to the nearest safe zone, a neighborhood in Davenport where delivery of the tainted vaccine had been delayed because of a traffic accident. Some might even call it an act of God. Jimmy thinks he might have been here once before everything went to hell. It's not easy to tell because of the steel fences and barbed wire that are being erected and the military on every street corner. When Jimmy asks, he is told brusquely that they are here on order of the President to keep the civilians safe in a tone that heavily implies _'idiot'_.

Jimmy's notes were left in Pontiac along with whatever small remnants of his old life, but that doesn't mean the flame has gone out, only tamped to a spark in the ashes. Once they settle in the temporary shelters and enough complacency has set in for them to feel safe, Jimmy finally gives in and falls asleep.

Jimmy dreams; an old familiar dream, dropped in for a visit.

In it the rain is falling hard as always, soaking into his clothes and hair. It glances off the leaves and skips against the pavement, gurgling through the storm drains; and all of it is a voice tracing the shell of his ear, whispering of destiny, of salvation and sacrifice. Water drips down his face and it feels like the caress of a cold, intangible hand.

_I can save them. All you have to do is to say _yes.

Jimmy rubs his sore wrists where the ropes had cut deep into the skin. The first time he had agreed without hesitation, spurred by the danger, his unthinking trust in the mercy of angels. Every time he relives the dream, the pauses in between the request and the answer grow longer, but the answer hasn't changed. Not yet. He isn't strong enough yet.

A comet asks you to ride with it, you say yes. You don't ask for directions, you just hang on tight and hope with everything you have that you don't get thrown off.

The rain pelts down around him and they both wait for the inevitable, thunder booming in the distance like the sound of beating wings.

* * *

Jimmy learns how to shoot.

He justifies it as self-defense, serving his country, whatever that sounds good. Now and then the soldiers head out into the hot zone, slow but surely reclaiming parts of the city. They need all the trained men they can spare and so during those times Jimmy and the other volunteers help stand guard under strict supervision.

It is long and boring but also dangerous, the worst combination possible, which means that Jimmy's eyes keep slipping shut only to snap open in an instant at sounds both real and imagined, magnified to the accompaniment of his rapidly beating heart. Still, it is better than drowning in lethargy, waiting for the barest minimum of news that the soldiers allow in, better than sitting around just waiting to be told when to go home. Amelia takes up first aid and sometimes comes back in the wake of a patrol gone wrong white-faced and trembling, but she never stops. Jimmy finds out what a head looks like when shot at point-blank range with a shotgun but he never stops.

Everyone just wants to be useful; in the hope that, somehow_, _what they are doing _helps _beyond the here and now, that all the sum of their combined efforts will snowball enough to stop humanity from falling over the edge. No one speaks of it as if in fear that once brought under the sunlight it will melt away like a desert mirage, and with it, their last hope.

It is at one of those extended walkabouts at the chain-link fence that Jimmy first learns about Camp Chitaqua.

That night three bodies already sprawl facedown in the street and Jimmy's hands don't shake anymore as he lowers the shotgun. His aim is still slightly off but it hardly matters when the Crotes simply charge ahead like a bull at a matador. The shot of adrenaline pumping through his veins will be enough to keep him awake for the rest of the night but he accepts the cigarette from Kennedy anyway, wanting to take the edge off the metallic taste lingering on his tongue.

"Hey, man, don't you ever get tired of this shit?" Kennedy asks, blowing out a stream of smoke and staring out at the deceptively quiet night beyond. They aren't really supposed to be talking but the officer has moved on to check on another part of the fence.

Harris snorts and kicks the toe of his boot against the ground. "You mean you _aren't _already?"

"That's not what I mean." Kennedy looks around and lowers his voice as though about to impart a great secret, causing the others to lean towards him. "No one ever tells us anything, man! Not the grunts, not the brass, as though we don't spend the nights freezing our asses off for them. It's all just do this, do that. What are we, robots?"

Harris shrugs. "They're the guys with the guns, including the one in your hand. Face it, dickish as they are the military is our best hope of getting out of this one alive. The last thing everyone needs now is a revolt."

"How stupid do you think I am?" Kennedy says, indignant. "I'm just sayin', things could be run better!"

""Like how?" Harris is skeptical.

"I heard the brass talking the other day. They were real angry about it, started shouting," Kennedy says, gleefully conspiratorial. "Some civilian went against orders, set up a militia of his own around South Dakota. Runs sweet and tight as a drum. If I ever met that guy, I'd shake his hand. Cool name too. Like a gun…"

Jimmy's neck prickles, and something both hot and cold slithers through his chest. Memories twist in his mind like live wires, electrifying him wherever they touch. "Was it…say, Winchester?" he says in what must be the worst attempt at casual ever.

Kennedy stares at him. "How the hell did you know?"

Jimmy forces his shoulders up in a shrug. "Lucky guess?"

* * *

Three days later an infected soldier somehow gets past the security checkpoint and proceeds to run wild through his shocked troopmates when the poison finally takes hold in the barracks. Luckily they manage to put him down in time but not before he infects two others and kills another man. It is a cold reminder that they are only in the eye of a storm that has yet to pass and this finally makes up Jimmy's mind for him.

"You want to go _where?" _Amelia stares at him like he's a madman. Jimmy ignores her and checks his bag of supplies again. He doesn't have long; he'd failed to return his gun and ammunition to the quartermaster and the loss won't go unnoticed.

"I know where Claire is," he says rapidly. The dullness that had shadowed him for too long is gone and he is _burning, _he has a purpose before him that he can track and map in his mind. He feels _alive._

"We've had this conversation before." Amelia grabs his hand, pleading. "She's _gone, _Jimmy. With the world like this, do you think the angels are ever going to let her go? Assuming if…_Castiel _isn't dead itself already?"

"I don't care," Jimmy says stubbornly. "We have to go find her, she shouldn't have—she didn't deserve—as long as there is a chance to save her—" There are too many words he wants to say and too much that can't be articulated without breaking the dam on his emotions and so he just shuts up, waits for Amelia's reply. She knows everything, anyway. Almost everything.

He doesn't expect this: "Leave if you have to. But don't expect me to come with you."

"…What?"

"Jimmy, I understand." Amelia wipes angrily at the tears in her eyes. "If I keep you here, you won't be happy even if you're alive and safe, will you? But as for me…I've made friends here, I have a job to do. Are you going to take me away from that?"

"Amelia…" Jimmy reaches for her hands but she draws them away. "Please, don't you want to see Claire again?" Emotional blackmail at its finest—or worst—and he completely deserves the scorching glare that Amelia directs at him.

"I just don't want to have to choose between you and Claire," Jimmy mumbles, looking away.

Amelia sighs and finally comes close, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her smile is sad and distant and Jimmy doesn't like how it makes her look almost like a stranger, like the people who used to come up and commiserate with him over Claire's disappearance, full of pity. "You talk too much, Jimmy. Even in your sleep."

Jimmy freezes, not knowing where this is heading, but then Amelia kisses him, soft and gentle, and they know without words that this is goodbye. Jimmy's own eyes blur but somehow he manages to get himself out of the door and down to the meeting place without running into anything.

"The missus not coming?" Kennedy asks, faintly puzzled when Jimmy brushes past, silent. "Oh, okay then. Gotcha."

Kennedy, the _de facto _leader by virtue of the fact that he'd dreamed this plan up—with some encouragement from Jimmy—takes the ragged group out of the shadows of the alley. Jimmy doesn't know them all, their names lost in the stuttering of the needle, the memories that rewind themselves and replay again and again, at times far more vibrant than the drab shades of the present can ever be.

Kennedy catches his eye and waves him forward, grinning. "Camp Chitaqua or bust, huh, Novak?"

"Or bust," Jimmy agrees. He is armed with more than a prayer now and every step he takes brings him closer to his daughter. Already the world seems a little brighter and the cool breeze he feels against his upturned face just then feels almost like a blessing, a touch from a passing angel.

-_end of part one-

* * *

_

Ending Notes: Heh, I couldn't resist and snuck in a reference to my Gen Big Bang fic in here. I'd be making a lot more progress if I didn't keep getting sidetracked by all the bunnies. Oh well. Part Two will be up soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **With A Song and A Prayer  
**Characters/Pairings:** Jimmy/Clairestiel, Dean, Risa

**Rating:** PG-13  
**Summary:** Jimmy chases down one ghost after another, searching for Claire, Castiel, or both. Eventually, he reaches the end of the world. 4.20/5.04 AU.  
**Word Count: **3,821

**Total Word Count: **6,863

**Warnings: **Bad language, substance and alcohol abuse, semi-incest  
**Notes: **After reading some frankly awesome stories about how Claire meets 2014!Castiel, this idea turned up like a bad penny and I just had to write it. Also, Novakangst. There isn't ever enough of it.

* * *

_Now I lay me down to sleep,_  
_I pray the Lord my soul to keep_  
_may angels watch me through the night_  
_and wake me with the morning light_

- 18th century children's prayer, variation

* * *

The weather-beaten sign next to the gate says _Camp Chitaqua, _but it might as well have said _El Dorado _or _Atlantis _for all the mythical status it'd been elevated to on the long journey here. It's not gold or ancient wisdom that Jimmy seeks here, though, and as he walks through the camp he feels a confused, tangled yearning, closing in a chokehold around his throat. _Claire, _he thinks, fervent as a prayer. He has to have faith, that he is right; that where Dean is Castiel-in-Claire is also—

"Hey, Dad," he hears, and the world stops.

He turns around and it is 2009 all over again, the crack in his life that had swallowed him whole and then spat him out and he has been stumbling ever since. Claire smiles—no, grins widely at him, one hand propped against her hip—the hand that had held his so tightly with its mute pleading message and then let go against its owner's will. His fingers curl with the phantom warmth, everlasting as a brand.

"Claire?" he breathes. It takes just two steps and she is in his arms, making a startled sound that comes out muffled against the fabric of his coat. Jimmy does not want to hear what she has to say. He does not want to look down at her face. He simply wants this moment, this Claire-shaped body snug against his and filling the absence left untended in his heart for too long.

Wetness glistens on the shine of Claire's golden head; belatedly Jimmy realized that he is crying. His grip slackens and the girl in his arms pulls away, tugging at the hem of her faded hoodie to straighten it out. Her smile has shut off like a switch, taking Claire with it and leaving the blank inscrutable expression of the angel.

"Jimmy. We need to talk," Castiel says.

* * *

Jimmy listens. Occasionally he asks questions. He does not shout, or cry, or strike Castiel, though he would have liked to indulge in all three. Though he knows now that Claire is dead her ghost moves in the quiet from gesture to gesture, muscle memory retaining and expressing the last of her lovely, girlish essence in the clasp of the hands or the twitch of a smile. Castiel's fire is a tiny little flicker behind Claire's blue eyes, humanity swallowing the angel like a cage; Jimmy should not be pretending but the part of himself that still hopelessly seeks keeps trying and trying, watching for and greedily devouring any bit of Claire that shines forth.

"Don't do that," Castiel says.

"What shouldn't I be doing?"

"I'm not your daughter," Castiel says bluntly. Her hair is too short and her face too thin, Claire through a smudged lens and it helps if Jimmy focuses on that instead. "And _you _are definitely not my Father."

"I know," Jimmy says, words the only weapons that he allows himself to use. "I actually give more than a couple of shits about Claire, don't I?"

Castiel glares, but without the electric charge of grace hanging over her like an approaching storm she is only a girl with a pinched angry face, thin shoulders slumping like a loosely-strung bow. Jimmy feels suddenly sorry, regret twisting his tongue into knots; he stands up and moves closer, only for Castiel to ward him off with an upraised hand.

"_Don't _touch me," she says through her teeth and goes away, leaving a trail of flattened grass in her wake. Jimmy lets her go. Claire is dead and Castiel only a shadow of her former self; he had come expecting to find one or the other only to find both as good as dead.

Amelia was right, after all. The wasted years, the taste of failure a rotted rancid thing in his mouth: it's just another note in the same old song.

* * *

Not long after, Jimmy meets Dean Winchester for the second time. The memory of the first meeting fills every pause with awkwardness, hollows out even the standard pleasantries. Dean seems smaller, diminished somehow without the looming form of his brother at his back; Jimmy does not want to imagine what he himself must appear to Dean.

"You've come a long way," Dean says, ostensibly meaning Davenport. "…I'm sorry it had to be for nothing."

Jimmy nods, not trusting himself to speak. He can't stomach apologies about what can't be changed but coming from Dean the sentiment does not ring as false. Strange, to feel a bond with _Dean Winchester, _of all people. To start so far apart only to end up in the same place. A shiver passes through Jimmy's body and it feels like a brush with the weighty hand of fate, all his choices meaningless and himself predestined from birth to have an angel crammed down his throat and destroy all semblance of _normality _in his life forever.

"Don't be too hard on Cass, okay?" Dean says, abruptly. There is absolutely no expression on his face; Jimmy wonders when it was that an angel started showing more emotion than a human. But there is concern enough in the words if not the tone: "It wasn't Cass who killed your daughter. The son-of-a-bitch who did it is long gone, and I won't have you beating on one of my men for no good reason."

"You can't ask that of me," Jimmy says.

Dean simply gives him a flat look. "No, I can't," he agrees. "But while you're standing inside the boundaries of _my _camp I can damn well order it of you. Got that?"

Jimmy shrugs, the brief flare of anger dying just seconds after the spark. What did it matter? "Yes, sir," he delivers the line like he's in the army, and is only mildly sarcastic when he says it.

* * *

Claire's hand clings tightly to his as though it will never let go. For an instant they are together and no misunderstanding, not even a bright and holy angel of the Lord, can come between them.

_Don't ever leave me again._

_I won't._

A beat later, _I'm sorry. _

And then Claire's hand opens, drops his. Something unwanted, discarded like a shed skin. That's what he will always remember, that's what he will never forget.

_His life is a fucking broken record. _

There is the dream he remembers having, not long after Claire had gone for good. In the dream he is standing at the wayside and the dusty road stretches wide and empty in both directions for miles. It never rains although the thunder rolls backwards and forwards across the sky in a low, continuous growl, a prowling beast refusing to pounce. The earth is cracked and dry and the grass crackles like a gunshot whenever he shifts his feet.

There are footprints in the dust leading away; someone just passed by, someone who will pass by again. The silence falls like the dust but the prints will always remain fresh and the road will always remain empty.

And Jimmy will always keep waiting, because.

The road swallows single travelers. It's best not to travel alone.

* * *

"Word is that Cass is your long-lost kid."

Jimmy frowns as Risa perches on the edge of the table, peering at Jimmy like _he's _the intruder. He's impressed; it doesn't take more than five seconds before his skin starts crawling under her iron gaze.

"That wasn't just some friendly hug, Novak," she says, low and dangerous. "Either you're family or—something else. Care to provide an explanation?"

It takes a moment for understanding to sink in. Risa is _protective. _She's protective over an angel thousands of years old who has forgotten more battles than anyone here will ever fight, an angel who only happens to _look _like a little girl. Jimmy chokes down the hysterical laughter searing across his throat but Risa reads it in his expression anyway, and her face darkens.

"My daughter is dead," Jimmy says shortly. "It was just a case of mistaken identity, that's all."

Risa relaxes only marginally, doubt lingering in her eyes and in the bowed, considering line of her mouth. "I'm sorry. I thought…it's such a pity."

He shouldn't, but he asks anyway. "How so?"

"You've heard the stories about Cass," Risa says directly and without embarrassment. "It's none of my business what adults do, but Cass, she's still a kid. Only some seriously bad shit messes kids up like that."

_You have no idea, _Jimmy thinks darkly. Of course he has heard all about Cass, as much as he tries not to. It's not his business what she does with a vacated vessel, or so he tells himself. She smokes and drinks and hangs around with her gaggle of admirers and is an excellent shot when she isn't sleeping something off. Everyone pities her for the past they should have no right to speculate about.

They have no idea, none; no remedy or medicine or advice that can set Castiel right again, nothing that can give Castiel back what she had lost. And the worse thing is, Jimmy knows, at least a little of it. Five minutes are a long time to spend with an angel's soul wrapped around your own, and Jimmy had not been evicted without a few choice souvenirs. Even so it's impossible to describe without resorting to cliché, that convenient, handy trigger of emotion: _Oh, Castiel, how the mighty have fallen._

It is all because of Claire_, _the shape that Castiel had chosen apparently at a whim. Jimmy wonders if people would be so forgiving or so persistent if Castiel had been dressed up in _Jimmy's _body instead. Somehow, he doubts it.

"I was hoping you would be a good influence." Risa sighs. "Dean doesn't control her like he should. Like her father should, if he was here."

Jimmy looks away, his lips clamped shut against the bitter, corrosive laughter eating away his insides.

"I wouldn't place too much trust in absent fathers."

"True." Risa's own gaze is distant, probing some private moment in time. "That's why we look out for each other here." She chuckles grimly, popping off the table to signify that she is done hounding Jimmy over poor fragile Cass. "It's not just blood that makes family, you know?"

* * *

Somehow, Jimmy and Castiel end up paired together on watch duty.

They stand guard outside the supermarket, guns at the ready while Brian raids the store and Yeager loads the loot into the truck. The silence is heavy, uncomfortable. Putting up with it is, however, a lot less daunting than the prospect of breaking it.

A small breeze dances across the parking lot, sending Castiel's cigarette smoke directly into Jimmy's face. "Watch it," he says automatically, leaning away.

"Or you could just park your ass somewhere else," Castiel suggests.

It is the first time they have talked to each other in weeks and already it's at a bad start. Jimmy can't help but feel relief that the first hurdle is over, however. He does not want Castiel's forgiveness but neither does he want her pain on his conscience. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said. I shouldn't have—"

"Forget it," Castiel says, quick and dismissive. Her shoulders hunch under her heavy coat. "It's nothing I haven't thought myself, to my everlasting regret."

Jimmy looks sidelong at Castiel. Suddenly, he finds himself incapable of anything but apologies. Castiel took Claire away from him without a flinch but now the pain of loss has gutted Castiel open like a fish and infected her with the wretched wants and miseries of humanity where there had been once nothing but iron certainty. Jimmy is sorry that Castiel has known nothing but the _bad _side of humanity. He's sorry that the world has ended and can't give Castiel what she needs.

He thinks that he can even forgive Castiel for the smoking and drinking and the fucking, if only she wasn't using Claire'sbody to do it.

"Stop looking at me like that," Castiel says in exasperation, spitting out the cigarette onto the tarmac. It glows for an instant before she grinds it out with the heel of her shoe. "Consider it payback for how I ran away with your daughter and got her killed, okay? There. We're even."

It hurts to hear about Claire spoken of so casually, and Jimmy can't control the anger that lashes out like a whip at the source of the pain. "Even? Don't make me laugh. If anything, _you _owe _me_, Castiel. You owe me all that you can give because you _took everything that I ever had_."

The words ring in the air between them, clear as a bell. Jimmy cringes, shocked at himself, the depth of an emotion he usually does his best not to acknowledge. Castiel regards him with narrowed blue eyes, her mouth flat and thin and he braces himself for the inevitable explosion.

"What is that you want from me?" she says instead, barely a whisper.

Jimmy stares at her, dry-mouthed. He starts to reply, he doesn't know what, but then Castiel spins around, bringing her rifle to bear. "Pay attention, Jimmy!" she shouts and fires across the parking lot at the fast food restaurant where the Crotes are swarming around the corner and coming right towards them, bent on their single-minded task of adding every last human on earth to their ranks.

Jimmy has killed far too many Crotes to count, but he can't ever set one on his sights without feeling a shiver that starts at his hands and ends up in his bones. They were human, and are still human-shaped, dressed in the ragged remains of suits and dresses and uniforms bearing silent testament to the lives they had once led. He used to say a prayer for every one he killed; now there is no one to listen he simply _remembers _that once they were human and just like him.

Castiel has no such reservations. As they cover Brian's and Yeager's retreat to the truck Jimmy catches a glimpse of her face, hard and bright as diamond and her lips curled in a wild, triumphant grin. "Take that, you sons of bitches!" she yells in between the cracks of gunfire and she is _laughing. _Jimmy has never heard her laugh before, not without the influence of some drug or other.

Then all of them are safely inside and the truck is speeding away. Castiel hangs out the back, blasting away the few Crotes that come too close. Her cheeks are still flushed and it strikes Jimmy how dead she looks in comparison the rest of the time, how dull and lifeless. The dissonance only deepens when she glances over and smiles at him like the earlier conversation never happened.

"You actually _enjoy _this?" Jimmy asks. He is not sure whether to be horrified or glad that Castiel is actually capable of happiness.

"Only second to sex," Castiel answers. Her eyes are fever-bright, and for a moment Jimmy sees her as she must have been, the warrior of God filling Claire to the seams with burning grace. She is beautiful and Jimmy _remembers, _the ebb and flow of that light branding the patterns of its movement under his skin, so cold that it had burned even into the weeks heart twists inside the cradle of his ribs in recognition, opening wide in instinctive, yearning welcome.

"You know, you're not such a bad guy after all, Jimbo," Castiel says idly. "We'll have to do this again sometime."

* * *

"In retrospect," Castiel muses, "you were probably the better choice."

They sit side by side on the step of Castiel's cabin, shoulders and thighs brushing. It has become something of a habit, to take some quiet moment and make it their own. The sun moves overhead and their combined shadow with it, pale and wavery in the weak light and then Castiel just comes out and says this, right out of the blue.

"How's that so?" Jimmy asks, a study in neutrality. Castiel's eyes are wide and hazed-over, her pupils large and dark and drugged out; there is little that comes out of her lips at the moment that he can actually trust as the truth.

"You don't treat me like a child," Castiel says, throwing one arm around his waist and squeezing. Her head falls against his shoulder and her breath wells hotly against his neck. Jimmy tenses only slightly at the closeness. They had, after all, shared a body once. There isn't that much further to go after that kind of intimacy.

"That's because you aren't one," Jimmy says. "You just look like one."

"If I had taken you," Castiel says dreamily, "I'd look like an adult right now. Then I wouldn't have this problem and I wouldn't feel like such a dirty old pervert when I sleep with those boys. They're the only ones who want to be with me," she confides in gloomy tones. "That, or sexual deviants, I suppose."

"Too much information, Castiel," Jimmy sighs. It's not that Castiel has stopped hurting him, just that he has grown a thicker skin out of sheer self-defense. In any case Castiel's warm weight on him feels good and he would like it if she stays there. "That's hardly a good reason for me to give you my body just so that you can have even _more_ sex with it."

"_Hah." _Castiel snorts. She goes quiet, and Jimmy thinks that she has fallen asleep until she speaks again, small and muffled. "It won't work, anyway. I'm trapped inside this body." She sounds more awake now, swimming towards the surface in rough, angry strokes. Her hand closes over his wrist, like a cuff clicking shut. "We're all trapped where we are."

* * *

"Hey, Novak. Get your ass here."

Yeager waves him down, and it is obvious what the problem is straight away: Cass is passed out against him, head lolling like a doll's. Jimmy bites back a curse and accepts the drunken Castiel into his arms. "Shouldn't you be taking better care of her?" Yeager asks pointedly.

"Well...you know Cass." Jimmy hurries away with his burden before any more of Castiel's sins can be laid at his door. The abbreviation still feels strange on his tongue, mostly because it sounds like it could be short for something normal, human: _Cassie, _or _Cassandra, _perhaps. Not for the name of a being that's older than all of them combined, that once burned hot and cold as a star and breathed in the dust of the emerging universe. Just imagining the sights it must have seen both awes and disquiets him.

It occurs to him then as he looks down at the sleeping girl that as young as she looks this is Castiel in her last days; that no matter whether they win or lose here Castiel is still going to die, thousands of years of knowledge and memories going forever into the quiet night. An unutterable sorrow fills him, the same kind that is inspired by the senseless destruction of any sort of precious ancient art or history, another Great Library of Alexandria burning down before his very eyes and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

Castiel stirs as he sets her down gently on her bed. As he turns to go one hand shoots out and grabs him by the hand. Her eyes are open, clouded, and when he looks into them he sees no God or angels or even Claire but simply Cass and Cass alone.

"Don't go," she slurs, thick tongue tripping over the words. Her grip tightens. "Father, don't leave me...take me back..."

Jimmy could have broken the weak grasp easily and walked out, found someone else to take care of her. He could have left her alone so easily. Instead he sits down on the edge of the bed and lets her fingers curl against the inside of his wrist. The Fall had not simply stolen Castiel's grace; it had broken something in her as well, taken the steel from her spine and the song from her voice, and for the first time he looks at her and the sound of _Cass _does not ring too oddly in his thoughts.

"Cass?" he says quietly, bending over her. "Can you hear me?"

Her lips move, and Jimmy leans closer, obligingly. He is not prepared when Castiel fists her hands in the front of his shirt and drags him down with surprising strength. "You're too far away," she gasps. "I can't—I can't _feel _you."

"I'm right here, Castiel." Jimmy tries not to recoil at the reek of alcohol on her breath. If they got any closer they would be trading spit, and if it is not for Castiel's obvious need Jimmy would have hightailed it out of here long ago. "I'm never going to leave you."

_Not like you left me. _The words rise up as though from some primeval depth, halted on his lips at the last moment. They are their own people now. They are _separate—_

"I'm not Claire."

"I know."

"You're not God."

Jimmy huffs out a dry laugh against Castiel's skin. "Believe me, I _know_."

"Today, my brothers and sisters left the earth," Castiel says, softly. Her nose bumps against his as she pulls, harder, nearly bending Jimmy double. "It's so quiet in here, and I can only feel myself. Claire is gone, I'm so sorry, Jimmy—"

"You told me before," Jimmy says. His spine is starting to creak in protest. "It's—well, it's _not _okay, but please, just do me a favour and don't talk about it."

"I'm alone," Castiel says, as though imparting some great, gospel truth. "I don't want to be alone anymore. Jimmy, please, say yes."

"What?"

Castiel's eyes half-shut, exhausted after her outburst. "Please, say yes and let me in. I won't—I promise I won't ever leave you again." In a whisper, "I know how it feels now."

Jimmy hesitates, but Castiel is human now and her days of swapping vessels like suits in a wardrobe are over. Nothing will happen but that Castiel will receive some small measure of comfort. As though it's no big deal at all he opens his mouth and he says, "_Yes."_

Castiel kisses him.

It's chaste, as far as kisses go; just a touch of the lips and then Castiel falls back, her grip slackening and her eyes slide shut the rest of the way. Jimmy freezes, staring at her long after she has fallen asleep. His daughter—this is his daughter. He can't—

No, it's Castiel. Claire is dead.

Jimmy slides into bed next to Castiel and holds her against him, feeling the rise and fall of her chest in tandem with his. Together, like this, he feels he hasn't failed—that somehow without him looking the end of the journey has come right up to his feet, and he has come home.

-_end-

* * *

_

Ending Notes: THIS TOOK FAR LONGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD. You wouldn't believe the sheer number of excess words I trashed while writing this thing. As a result this story might have become a little…strained…near the end. Also it become kind of indulgent because this was supposed to be all sad and horrible but ended up…not being that much so. At long last it's done, though. *whew*


End file.
